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Hearing the voice of Donbas: art and literature as forms of cultural protest during war

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Yuliya Ilchuk
Yuliya Ilchuk*
Affiliation:
Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
*
∗Email: jilchuk@gmail.com
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Abstract

This paper analyzes literary, visual, and street art works of writers and artists from Eastern Ukraine produced during 2014. Two Donetsk artists, Serhii Zakharov and Anzhela Dzherikh, and two Luhansk writers, Serhii Zhadan and Olena Stepova, play with the myth of the proletarian Donbas, on the one hand, and debunk the popular perception of Donbas people as being in consent with the politics of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, on the other. They explore familiar tropes and images of Donbas and use guerrilla tactics (shock effects, provocativeness, and deception) to initiate public reaction to the war. Their works are united by their search for a shared communication space and direct access to the audience on occupied territories. These artists challenge the accepted perception of Donbas as a free but uncivilized space and participate in the creation of a new Donbas text. The interaction between politics, art, and activism makes their voices and vision powerful and infectious and can help achieve civic consolidation in Donbas.

Keywords

artUkrainewar in Donbasethnic conflictartistic citizenship
Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , March 2017 , pp. 256 - 273
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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